Jean-Luc Istin

(b. 1 August 1970, France)

Les Brumes d'Asceltis, artwork by Istin himself

Jean-Luc Istin is a comic artist and writer of mainly heroic fantasy comics, originally from the Breton town of Pontivy. He is also head of several collections published by Soleil Productions, such as Soleil Celtic, 1800, Serial Killer, Secrets du Vatican and Anticipation. He began his career after completing his art studies and military service. His first publications as a writer and artist were in collective publications like BD-Clip by Zone Créative. He also contributed to the fanzine Avenir, where he worked with Guy Michel for the first time. Istin and Michel later created series like 'Aquilon' and 'Arthur Pendragon' for Nucléa and Soleil in 2001 and 2002.

Istin was one of the co-founders of the publishing house Nucléa, and was head of Nucléa's book publications from 1999. He launched a great many new series for the publisher, such as 'Aleph' with art by Dim D., 'Draven' with art by Istin himself and 'Merlin' with Éric Lambert. Both 'Aleph' and 'Merlin' were continued by Soleil from 2002. Spin-off series of 'Merlin' were launched in the following years, such as 'Merlin - La quête de l'épée' with art by Nicolas Demare (2005) and 'Merlin Le Prophète' with art by Pierre-Denis Goux (2010) and later Bojan Vukic.

Merlin - La quête de l'épée, artwork by Nicolas Demare

He also started new series such as 'Le Seigneur d'Ombre' with Dim D. (2003-2008), and 'Le Grimoire de Féerie' with Jean-Marie Minguez (2004-2006). He returned to the drawing pen himself for the series 'Les Brumes d'Asceltis', which is written by Nicolas Jarry since 2003. With artist François Gomès and co-scriptwriter Nicolas Pona he makes the series 'Les Terres de Sienn' since 2008 and he teamed up with Julien and Mathieu Akita on 'Les Aventures de Tom Sawyer' between 2007 and 2010.

Celtic legends are a large inspiration for Istin. He co-created the heroic fantasy series 'Les Druïdes' with writer Thierry Jigourel and artist Jacques Lamontagne in 2005. He also supervised collective series on Breton and Celtic legends, such as 'Les Contes de l'Ankou', 'Les Contes de Brocéliande' and 'Les Contes du Korrigan'. His label Soleil Celtic also publishes the series 'Les Brumes d'Asceltis', another collaboration with Guy Michel started in 2005. The art of the series was later continued by Stéphane Créty. Other series are 'Lancelot' with Alexe (since 2008), 'Hannibal Meriadec et les larmes d'Odin' with Créty (since 2009), 'Ys la légende' with Dejan Nenadov (since 2011), 'Nirvana' with Arnaud Boudoiron (since 2011), and 'Elfes' with Kyko Duarte and Gianluca Maconi (since 2013).